Wherein the author might try an new focus.
March 9th, 2005 | by Scott Jennings |I just finished serving as a juror in moot court at Duke’s law school as a favor to my old friend and former Jeopardy! champion Tom McCudden. It was far more fun than it should have been.
It was a murder trial, which is always excellent theater, and better still, both the prosecuting and defense attorneys were hot hot lady lawyers. Mrrrrrow. The actual trial took about three hours, including a brief pizza recess.
Then we went to the next room to deliberate, while the professor-judge and the student-lawyers watched us via closed circuit. We spent an hour arguing whether or not a police officer who just resigned from the force was negligent or reckless in how he allegedly disarmed his girlfriend who allegedly took his gun away from him. (I didn’t believe that the tiny girl took the sidearm away from the great big man, but let’s argue one thing at a time.) My new-Harold-team teammate Jon Miles was the only other person I knew on the five person jury, and conveniently, we were adamantly on opposite sides of the case. I thought it was a slam dunk for manslaughter, maybe even second degree murder. Jon wanted to find him not guilty.
After about an hour of invigorating and passionate beet-red argument, and after a threat to harangue him forever, Jon finally broke the deadlock, and we convicted the mock defendant of criminally negligent homicide, the lowest charge we had available. (The mock defendant had already gone home, presumably preemptively sentenced to time served.) I honestly had a great time, gavel to gavel. (There were no gavels.)
You know, I considered law school after college, I really did. A whole list of my friends went that route, and it seemed to work out well for them. I just wasn’t ready for more school way back at age 20, you know? I was, by any standard, an awful student, I just wasn’t an academic, and I knew that I wouldn’t be successful in a competitive academic environment. You can coast through your undergrad and no one will really do much to stop you, but coasting through grad school will probably not carry you up the hill. So I didn’t try.
That was damn well near five years ago. (Holy shit.) And today, I still don’t think I’m ready for law school, I still wouldn’t be confident about being successful. There’s more I need to accomplish out in the real world before I’d want to take another crack at being an academic, but I’m not really working towards that. Tonight made me think: maybe I should. I’d be an excellent lawyer. And maybe in two or three years, I’ll be ready for law school — if I get off my ass and make it happen.
